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Saturday, 13 October 2018

The former Union
Minister is anticipating a ‘blowout’ for the BJP in the polls, and is
entertaining hopes of being called upon to follow in Manmohan Singh’s
footsteps by being nominated as PM by Sonia Gandhi.

The “insider vulture cabal” led by a former senior minister from the
UPA, is readying for the delivery of a “knockout blow” to short-term
economic prospects by 20 January 2019. Their expectation is for Prime
Minister Narendra Modi to call for Lok Sabha elections that would be
held in the third week of April 2019, and that a major economic shock
would reduce, if not eliminate altogether, the BJP’s chances in the
urban constituencies the party must win in order to return to power,
even as the leader of a coalition. Ironically, this very
politician-cum-cabal leader had been frantically seeking to join the BJP
in 2002, but was blocked from doing so by party functionaries in his
home state, who were unanimous that he would be totally unwelcome in the
saffron party. The former Union Minister is now anticipating a
“blowout” for the BJP in the 2019 polls, and is known to be entertaining
hopes of being called upon to “follow in Manmohan Singh’s footsteps” by
being nominated as Prime Minister by the Supreme Margdarshak of the
Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi, who, the former minister’s acolytes claim,
wanted to see him in the Prime Minister’s chair from 2012 onwards, but
refrained out of regard for a “visibly faltering” Manmohan Singh. Such
talk is being spread these days, in order to scare and to de-motivate
officials looking into the former minister and his family’s financial
transactions, as he is known to be “exceptionally generous to those who
obey him and cruelly vindictive to those who ignore his commands and
needs”. Although The Sunday Guardian had more than once warned
of the activities of this cabal, those within the ruling establishment
who are linked to the cabal, through fiduciary and personal bonds,
dismissed such warnings as “conspiracy theories” deserving of no
attention, an explanation that seems to have been accepted by the
government, as substantive action against the insider vulture cabal
appears to be non-existent for the eight months since such warnings were
first aired in this newspaper.
Indeed, to both North Block as well as Mint Road, India is a country
where under-invoicing of exports and over-invoicing of imports is
negligible; where insider trading and manipulation of share prices
hardly takes place; where the currency remains outside the zone of fire
of international predators out to “short” an increasingly pathetic
rupee; and that economic difficulties are related to “global cues”
rather than government policies. If this “purely global” talk were true,
the question would come up as to why the economic team within
government should not all be removed, so as to lower government
expenditure, given that whatever happens does so (according to them)
because of global factors outside their control. The reality is that
domestic policy makes all the difference in India’s nearly $3 trillion
economy, for better or for worse, depending on what basket of measures
gets worked out and implemented. Recently, RBI Governor Urjit Patel
seemed wholly unconcerned about the consistently declining value of the
rupee, while other policymakers dealing with economic policy waxed
complacent about job growth. Whether voters agree with such stands will
become clear in forthcoming state and national polls. Looking at such an
attitude of “not my business” and of course, “not my fault”, it is
unsurprising that so little attention seems to have been paid by
official agencies to the systematic manner in which the Cabal is
enriching itself and promoting the job trajectories and financial
fortunes of its members at the expense of the 1.27 billion population of
India.

AND NOW ABOUT CHIDAMBARAM

The identity of the senior minister who heads the Cabal will remain
undisclosed. Looking, however, to the case of former Union Minister for
Home and Finance, Palaniappan Chidambaram as an illustration of how (out
of ignorance of the facts or complicity with the former minister)
inquiries against him have been “systematically diluted and sidetracked”
(to quote a senior official who worked closely with the former
minister) by his well-wishers in the administration. Enforcement
Directorate senior official Rajeshwar Singh is reported as falling foul
of Chidambaram during the UPA period when he stumbled on some facts
relating to the minister’s son Karti, whose record in business success
would put the young Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg to shame. Aware that
the officer was not among the many within the agencies who were admirers
of “PC” (which in this case refers not to Priyanka Chopra but to P.
Chidambaram), Rajeshwar was known to have been advised by a senior North
Block official that he should not himself interrogate PC, but leave
that disagreeable task to another official chosen for the purpose by the
senior official who rendered him such instructions. When Rajeshwar
declined to oblige, allegations against him that had been investigated
six years ago by the CBI and the CVC (and found to be without merit)
were referred for fresh inquiry by a senior official in North Block. How
the unanimous findings of absence of guilt of the multi-member CVC and
the multi-member CBI investigation team could be re-examined six years
later by a solitary official (reporting to the same official who was
responsible for the anti-Rajeshwar enquiry getting re-started) is among
the several anomalies within the Lutyens Zone, which rewards its own and
punishes its detractors with unfailing ease, no matter which politician
occupies the Prime Minister’s chamber in South Block. It was expected
that the ED’s Rajeshwar would take the hint and forget about building up
a case against Chidambaram, busy as he would be in saving himself from
prosecution by obliging those seeking to torpedo his probe. He has not;
but has found the going very tough subsequent to his refusal to oblige
those eager to get him off the Chidambaram probe. Small wonder that only
rudimentary progress has so far been made into the investigations
relating to Chidambaram and his family members, that too mostly on
issues that are peripheral to the broader interests of this enterprising
family, or that the ED has not even been able to get permission to file
a charge-sheet in key matters against Chidambaram, much less arrest the
UPA VVIP.

The good news is that the ED contains officials who believe in
working for nearly 20 hours on some days in the service of the nation.
Among such luminaries is Seemanchal Dash, who was Private Secretary to
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who is acknowledged within his party as
the closest colleague of Prime Minister Modi in the Council of
Ministers. Although Dash is now Special Director in the ED (and may
become Director of that venerable institution in the fullness of time),
he spends several hours each day (usually 5p.m.-7.30p.m.) at North Block
giving his former colleagues the benefit of his expertise in finance.
Although uncharitable detractors say that such visits are intended to
give information about pending ED inquiries (including about
Chidambaram) to North Block grandees anxious about the fate of
Chidambaram, this allegation seems absurd. Dash is apparently motivated
only by love of country and not (as falsely alleged) love of PC and his
family. Hopefully, his long hours of work in both the ED as well as the
Ministry of Finance will not affect the health of an official who is on
track to head the ED in future, once the Modi government returns to
office in 2019, as expected by tens of millions who are admirers of the
Prime Minister. In the meantime, progress within the ED in cases such as
Aircel Maxis seem to be going the way of the 2G probe, where a CBI
Special Court came to the finding that the accused were free of blame.
The Enforcement Directorate, as a consequence, is earning the nickname
of “Escape Department”, given its almost non-existent record in bringing
to book VVIP perpetrators of frauds.

Whether by accident or by design, during the UPA tenure, Chidambaram
consistently saw officers trusted by him take up positions such as SEBI
Chairman, LIC Chairman, DG Investigation, Member Investigation, Joint
Secretaries in TRU and TPL and public sector bank chairmen. When he was
sworn in as Prime Minister, Narendra Modi took a very consequential
decision to give those officers who had worked closely with UPA-era
ministers (obviously also in the facilitation of deals that the BJP had
alleged were corrupt) a second chance. In the case of an officer (who
has since his retirement been given a job in a constitutional body of
enormous import) who was reported to have been involved in several land
transactions of a South Indian politician, it was said by a senior
supervisory official that “just because X was corrupt in a particular
state does not mean he will be corrupt at the Centre”. In his support
and respect for officials, the Prime Minister is going the way of
Vallabhbhai Patel, who as Home Minister ensured together with Prime
Minister Jawaharlal Nehru that the British-era colonial system of
administration continued into the post-1947 period, as indeed it does to
the present. It is another matter that such an attitude is leading to a
situation where the “insider vulture cabal” remains relatively immune
to action by the agencies, and is therefore in a condition to deliver a
knockout blow to economic prospects before the close of January 2019.
Unless officials linked to the cabal get identified and removed, the
group will continue to have the capacity to influence policies in ways
favourable to its colourable (mainly external) interests. Interestingly,
senior officials seem in the past to have gotten away even while making
juniors do their bidding in suspicious cases. For example, the chairman
of a public sector insurance company gave insurance in the UPA period
to a defunct airline based in Madurai on the basis of repeated telephone
calls from a senior official in Delhi. That insurance executive is now
in hot water, while the senior official (once in the Department of
Financial Services) who was actually responsible for the decision is
enjoying promotion upon promotion, including in the private sector.
Among other posts held by those close to the talented former Union Home
& Finance Minister, at least two major stock exchanges in India are
headed by individuals known to have been “exceptionally close” to P.
Chidambaram. Of course, such proximity should not be taken as any
evidence of wrongdoing.

PANIC CREATED BY CABAL

Returning to the senior UPA-era minister who heads the “insider
vulture cabal”, it is known within North Block that he ensured the
collection of photocopies and electronic data on a considerable list of
politicians (including in particular a Cabinet colleague) and officials.
Dossiers were prepared in key investigative departments under his
watch, which somehow found their way back to his personal cache (now
almost entirely kept abroad), with more than a few such dossiers getting
permanently removed from the files left behind in North Block. Each of
the officials and politicians figuring in such dossiers must be nervous
that their own misdemeanours would get outed in revenge by the former
minister, were he to be sent to prison. In the process, such activities
as the co-location imbroglio at NSE involving several brokers have been,
in effect, swept under the rug out of fear of the consequences of
action against the perpetrators, most of whom remain in high positions.
Hence the passion with which some senior officials are working to avoid
such accountability in several UPA-era misdeeds, including the selling
of public sector bank NPA at depressed prices to favourites, who later
resold the same at a huge profit. Interestingly, almost all such
favourites remain so in the present dispensation, which is not
surprising, given the Prime Minister’s statesmanlike 2014 decision to
trust hardcore UPA-era officers as key components of his own core group.
However, such bureaucrats may now be affecting the prospects for a
second term of Prime Minister Modi, who is facing flak from his base
over the lack of success of his government in bringing to book UPA-era
VVIP perpetrators of fraud, including in the matter of IL&FS. Of
course, in future the performance of those put in charge of this and
other damaged enterprises by North Block will come under scrutiny, given
the impossibility of keeping matters under wraps in this era of
smartphones and computer codes. In this context, LIC officials claim
that they had a workable plan to rescue IL&FS from poor decisions by
the management of that troubled entity. However, the “vulture cabal”
had its eye on several of the assets of the stricken company, and also
wanted control to go to a prominent businessman dabbling in NBFCs. They
therefore used their contacts to get the IL&FS board dismissed and a
fresh board appointed. The LIC officers believe that asset stripping
and transfer of control will soon follow. The “vulture cabal”, according
to them, had no hesitation in creating panic in the market through a
man-made crisis that could have been avoided if the LIC had its way.

Those insiders beholden to the insider vulture cabal are warning the
Prime Minister’s Office of a “market meltdown” and “economic mayhem”
that would take effect should leadership elements of this toxic band of
profiteers get sent to prison or even chargesheeted. The reverse is
actually true. Unless VVIP and VIP wrongdoers get proceeded against with
the full rigour of the law, there will be a denouement within three
months that could seriously affect the BJP’s chances for retaining power
in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Lack of action on the activities of the
cabal has resulted in the “October Meltdown” predicted by this paper.
Inaction against the cabal during the next 40 days will result in a
much more deadly “January Shock” getting delivered to the NDA
government.

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About Prof. M. D. Nalapat

Prof. Madhav Das Nalapat (aka MD Nalapat or Monu Nalapat), holds the UNESCO Peace Chair and is Director of the Department of Geopolitics at Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India. The former Coordinating Editor of the Times of India, he writes extensively on security, policy and international affairs. Prof. Nalapat has no formal role in government, although he is said to influence policy at the highest levels. @MD_Nalapat

MD Nalapat's anthology 'Indutva' (1999)

In 1999, Har-Anand published Indutva an anthology of MD Nalapat's 1990s columns from the Times of India. The individual columns are posted here, in 1998 and 1999 of the blog archive, though the exact dates of publication are uncertain.